


if this isn’t a kingdom

by figure8



Category: EXO (Band), K-pop
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Blood, Dysfunctional Relationships, Face-Fucking, Fighting Kink, M/M, Underground Dueling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-03
Updated: 2019-03-03
Packaged: 2019-11-08 08:58:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17978285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/figure8/pseuds/figure8
Summary: This is a map to my body. This is a map where I’ve circled all my soft spots. I trust you to hurt me. I trust you.





	if this isn’t a kingdom

**Author's Note:**

  * For [falloutgirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/falloutgirl/gifts).



> happy birthday, aubs <3 this is my tiny offering to congratulate you on one more year of existence. hurray! thank you for being literally the best. you are a star. 
> 
> to everyone else, i literally don’t know what’s going on in here. i was possessed. i did not write this

_The way you slam your body into mine reminds me I’m alive,_   
_but monsters are always hungry, darling,_   
_and they’re only a few steps behind you, finding  
the flaw, the poor weld, the place where we weren’t stitched up quite right_

 

 

After a fight, it’s always like this. Baekhyun’s eyes crazed, tumultuous ocean rising - Jongin’s hands hungry, searching. With the pads of his fingertips he reads Baekhyun’s body, looks for cuts and bruises he did not put there himself. The marks Jongin leaves on Baekhyun are different in that they are welcome. To the naked eye, maybe, they are the same as every other contusion Baekhyun wears on his skin like badges of honor, but both he and Jongin know - violence stops being violence when it is asked for, when it is loving.

Baekhyun is the best fighter their district has. He doesn’t look like much, compared to some others. He’s not small, but he’s of average height, and he’s slender. It’s all lean muscle, his body a well-oiled, perfectly trained machine; but when he stands next to men twice his size and thrice his weight, Baekhyun just appears tiny. Weak. People underestimate him, still to this day. Baekhyun loves proving them wrong.

Underground fighting is illegal, which means it rakes in _real_ money. That’s what got Baekhyun started - the promise of easy cash. That’s what got Jongin in the ring too, at first, during a particularly harsh winter. His sister had just had her second kid.

Baekhyun doesn’t fight for money anymore. Oh, he still needs it, and he still counts the bills at the end of the week, hands trembling a little, eyes frantic. But it’s a compulsion now, the ring. Split knuckles, busted lips, black eyes - they’re daily accessories now. He doesn’t know how to live without the rush of it, without the pain.

Jongin doesn’t fight for money either, these days. Jongin doesn’t fight at all, to be frank, except on evenings like tonight, after having made sure Baekhyun is still in one piece.

 _Byun Baekhyun’s last duel of the night!_ the speaker announces joyfully. The crowd roars. Baekhyun shakes his head like a wet dog, licks a pearly droplet of blood at the corner of his mouth. He looks demented. He looks beautiful.

_And his opponent for this round is the elusive Kai!_

That’s Jongin’s cue. He slithers under the ropes, fluid, already showing off. Kai has a reputation. He wears a mask, never shows his face. He moves like water. He only ever loses to Baekhyun.

The bell’s song tells them it’s time. _Ding ding ding,_ barely audible under the clamor. Baekhyun raises his guard, grinning. Jongin is grinning too, even if it’s under his mask. It doesn’t matter. He knows Baekhyun can see it in his irises.

And this, this is not unlike making love. A clash of bodies, a primal act. War and sex have always been, after all, the primary motors of history. War, and sex, and power - and it’s all three, always, whenever Jongin and Baekhyun touch.

Baekhyun gets him in the chin with a clean uppercut, and Jongin’s vision goes white for a second, ears ringing. He knows the spectators are shouting, but he can’t see them, and he can’t hear them, so for a blessed minute it is just him and Baekhyun on this platform. When his foot connects with Baekhyun’s torso, sending him reeling back, it is violence that is not violence.

This is a conversation. Circling each other, gauging each other - this is a dance, and it is a dialogue. They’re never more talkative than they are here, ready to strike, breaths held. Baekhyun babbles easily, always loud, always running his mouth, but it’s in the ring that they speak to each other for real. It’s in the ring that they met, after all.

Jongin’s body is throbbing. There is a bruise blossoming on his side, across his ribs, like a flower growing in fast-forward. He can feel it expanding with every breath. The surface of his skin buzzes with electricity. He wants to wrap his hands around Baekhyun’s throat. He wants Baekhyun to slam him into the ground, hold him down, forearm pressed to his solar plexus. It does not matter who wins. It’s always an offering either way.

Baekhyun jumps, his legs at a perfect angle for a roundhouse kick. Jongin sees it happen in slow motion, has the time to raise his arm, close his hand around Baekhyun’s ankle, drag him down in a loud _thump._ Baekhyun is _smiling_ when Jongin straddles his vanquished body.

“Your turn, then?” he asks, mouth bloody.

 _My turn,_ Jongin nods wordlessly, and then he taps the ground three times while Baekhyun struggles against his grip uselessly.

The speaker announces his victory. What they’ll earn from the bets will probably be enough to stay away from the club for more than two weeks, but Jongin already knows they’ll be back on Saturday.

Someone taps Jongin on the shoulder while he makes his way through the crowd towards the locker room. Jongin doesn’t turn around, doesn’t see the stranger’s face, but he catches the compliment - _you two know how to keep things interesting._ His lips stretch into a smirk against his will.

 

Baekhyun is waiting for him on one of the benches. It’s always like this, after a fight. Their friend Chanyeol comes to the club, sometimes, to watch the fights. On nights like these they tell him who to bet on. _It’s foreplay to you,_ he had remarked once. _I felt like I wasn’t supposed to see._

He’s wrong. It’s not foreplay. It is something on its own, completed in the ring, full circle. Whatever they do after that is its own thing, too. How Jongin kneels next to Baekhyun, kisses the inside of his wrist, forces him to unclench his fist so he can kiss his palm too - it’s a new story, another cycle. Hands that hurt, hands that heal.

There is blood all over Baekhyun’s face. Jongin cups his cheeks, kisses his mouth, licks the red off his lips. Laps at his chin until it’s clean too, erasing evidence, rewinding time. Baekhyun’s hands are clutching Jongin’s shirt like he needs an anchor. He, on the other hand, never wears a top when he’s fighting, and there’s blood and sweat for Jongin to taste on the side of his neck too, from their duel and from the other two before that. Baekhyun whines when Jongin digs his teeth into his collarbone, hips bucking up. He’s already hard. That, too, is expected. It’s always like this after a fight.

They share a bed in a small apartment at the very top of an old building. On that mattress they fuck slowly, hands and tongues roaming, exploring and sweet. On that mattress Jongin has whispered three words over and over into Baekhyun’s chest like a tattoo, permanent and potent. On that mattress Baekhyun rides him sometimes, doused in sunlight, head thrown back and beautiful and soft and demanding. Jongin loves looking at him like that - drinking him in, allowed.

In the locker room of the shadiest fight club in town, they fuck like starved animals, magnets reuniting after being kept apart, the gravitational pull too powerful to resist. Jongin divests Baekhyun of his pants, sinks to his knees again in front of him. He noses at Baekhyun’s erection through his underwear, playing it coy, looking up through his lashes. He knows he’s pretty. He knows he’s wanted. The confirmation still tastes like heaven, Baekhyun’s pupils dilating with desire, his fingers trailing down Jongin’s sharp jawline, pleading.

The door doesn’t lock. Anyone could walk in and find Kai on his knees, Byun Baekhyun’s cock down his throat. Jongin smiles at the thought, amused. Baekhyun traces his upper lip with his thumb, gentle, a wordless question. He wants to fuck Jongin’s mouth. Jongin wants him to, too.

The thing is, Jongin loves taking. In life, in the ring, in bed. But he loves giving too. He needs everything to be reciprocal. It’s only worth it if it is an exchange, and that’s why they take turns. Winning, losing, winning, losing. It’s a cycle. The snake eats its own tail.

It’s easy to escape, like this. Baekhyun’s grip tight in his hair, painful, dragging him up and down his length; Jongin’s jaw lax, mouth pliant. Baekhyun makes the best noises when he lets go completely, these little grunts that sound like they were ripped out of him, like he’s dying, like he needs Jongin to breathe. War, sex, power. Like this Jongin is powerless and powerful, like when he climbs onto the ring and faces his lover wearing a mask, his fists his only weapons. Give and take, steal and offer.

“Love you like this,” Baekhyun pants, “So good like this, on your knees for me like a good slut -”

 _Love you,_ Jongin hears, Baekhyun’s nails digging into the back of his neck, _love you, love you._

The first time they fought each other they didn’t know each other’s names. They were teens, famished and angry and so full of _life,_ it threatened to spill from every pore. Baekhyun’s hands on him then, already, had felt like freedom. It was the first time Kai had found a worthy opponent in the ring - someone who made him work for it. Their alliance had made sense then. It still makes sense now, albeit differently. Wolves lick each other’s wounds. It’s pack ritual.

 _Love you,_ Baekhyun says again, voice breaking, back arching beautifully as he spills inside Jongin’s mouth.

Before they had the apartment on the seventeen floor, Jongin used to drag Baekhyun back to his sister’s place, after the fights. He’d force him to sit down on the edge of the bathtub, rub alcohol on his injuries. The fear of infection had Baekhyun sitting still - a feat. They learned each other like this, a first aid kit open between them.

Like this, too - Baekhyun tasting his own release in Jongin’s mouth. Like this - Jongin rutting against Baekhyun’s bare thigh, chasing pleasure like a shooting star. Like this - words that stand in for other words.

In this life, in this world, you need a partner. Someone to watch your back. Someone to stand guard at your door.

And Baekhyun’s tongue still tastes like copper when Jongin sucks on it, filthy, wanting. The first time they ever touched was in a fight. Their first communion was in blood. This is their favorite tango.

And in a different universe, Jongin is certain of it, they have other people. They go through the motions of healthier, calmer love. In a different universe Jongin does not know what Baekhyun looks like draped in nothing but a white sheet, his skin marred with bruises that never have the time to heal. In another universe someone else kisses Baekhyun’s eyelids, someone else sees him in his most secret moments - when he cries, when he is gentle.

In this life Jongin takes his hand and leads them both into the shower, lets the water wash away dried hemoglobin and dirt and sweat and come. Baekhyun’s laughter sounds like a spoon against crystal when he recounts the fight. He picks apart Jongin’s moves and tells him where to hit next time.

_This is a map to my body. This is a map where I’ve circled all my soft spots. I trust you to hurt me. I trust you._

So after Jongin wraps him in a fluffy towel he presses his mouth into the fleecy fabric covering Baekhyun’s ear and he whispers in turn.

Give and take. Give and take. It’s always like this after a fight.

**Author's Note:**

> come say hi [on twitter](http://twitter.com/yifanapologist)!


End file.
